


I Think There's a Flaw in my Code...

by SongsofSamael



Series: B A D L A N D S [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4681394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongsofSamael/pseuds/SongsofSamael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"These voices won't leave me alone."</p><p>In which Root is a little more lost than usual, but still doing her job.</p><p>I can't say too much or it might give things away.</p><p>2/16 of the B A D L A N D S series. This one is for the song "Gasoline".  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRHNi3QfFlE]</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Think There's a Flaw in my Code...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neverander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverander/gifts).



Root's fingers are remarkably steady as she traces the strings of her harp, watching the room from her place in the orchestra pit.

When the Machine informed her of her new cover, she had felt, initially, confused. She was not adept at musical instruments. She was uncertain of the purpose when it came to understanding how music worked. The only music Root listened to was, however, quiet classical--just soft enough that she could still hear the Machine and relax at the same time if necessary. 

Their target--her target, for she is alone, now--is the young man whose place she subs in the orchestra this evening. Tyler Hodgkins; nineteen and terrified, is waiting in the back of Root's car in an alley five blocks away. His father; deep in debt to the mob, left his son the weight of his world when he died unexpectedly. A tragic train accident that came with a suspicious amount of injuries despite said train; injuries that just didn't add up to how he supposedly passed. Tyler in turn found himself being tailed, badgered, and even brutalized by the remnants of his father's poor choices. He was hunted, every single day, for money he neither had nor could collect--although he'd been offered to pick up the tab of his father's debt in other ways; he was a gentle soul. Death did not become him.

But death would come to him, if Root couldn't pull this off. Protect him, secure the threat, and ensure Tyler lived to fight another day.

Easier said than done, considering the majority of her specialties were tied neatly to computers and manipulation. The playing of a musical instrument seemed beyond her when she first received the task. And yet...

With the Machine guiding her hands, however, Root adapts to the situation accordingly. She becomes Sarah Desada, instrumentalist and harp prodigy. She is Celtic and she is quiet; she is a wallflower whose sole focus is only on her instrument--

And surely not the impending dread of discovery, the difficulty of this particular mission, and the uneasy claustrophobia that came with being dead center in an orchestra pit.

"Root," Sameen's voice is in her ear again. Root closes her eyes and continues plucking the instrument with cautious, careful vibrato, letting the resonance hum beneath her hands. Shaw's voice is, as always, melodic in its monotone and softly raspy in its physical quality. It's a welcome change from the robotic clicks, whirs, and words she streams through her cluttered head on a daily basis. There is a note of urgency to Shaw's flat voice, however, that gives her little comfort. "Twenty-six seconds."

A lot can happen in twenty-six seconds.

Root knows this. She knows it from the spit of shared gunfire; the running from a tall blonde executioner. She knows it in the drop of an elevator shaft, she knows it in the explosions of the street, she knows it in the way She switches Root to God Mode at her leisure. Time is uncontrollable, but it is manageable. 

She knows twenty-six seconds can mean warm lips; cinnamon and sharper spices, pressing against her lips. Twenty-six seconds of shared oxygen and careful hands so slow they make twenty-six seconds seem like eternity. It all slows like hummingbird wings in half-time, each beat a second's worth of time. Each beat of a hummingbird's wing becomes a pulse in her heart. It becomes a note of grandiose, gradual music. It builds, and builds, and builds until--

All is screaming.

Pleasant or otherwise.

She opens her eyes in time to see the conductor pause in his motions, looking around in confusion. She hears the rumbling of the confused crowd, the squeaks and detachment of musical instruments. The orchestra is bewildered; why have they stopped?

Then it becomes evident.

In the two seconds it takes for the thought to register fully, Root is up and running, ripping her long black dress to make room for her incredible amount of leg. The gunman who stood up in the audience opens fire; shattering chandeliers on the ceiling and raining crystals on the frightened crowd below. In three seconds, Root wrenches two guns from under the remnants of her dress and cocks them, ducking away through the back door of the pit, knowing all too well this means she's heading into narrow territory and even more enclosed spaces. It takes her ten seconds to bar the door behind her with a well-placed pit chair and two heavy boxes full of composition books. 

"Root!" Shaw's voice is even more urgent than before, frustrated.

"Yes, sweetie, I hear you," Root mutters, both guns in one hand as she pulls her hair up and out of her face with another. The backstage area is nigh impenetrable when it comes to navigating, but the Machine's sonar directs her accordingly. She turns left, then sharp right, zig-zagging through the abyssal, endless shadows of the opera house's underbelly.

"Wasn't there a musical about this?" Root asks Shaw vaguely, shifting one gun in each hand as she pauses mid-step outside a dressing room door. Shaw's sigh of irritation is followed by a curt,

"Is now really the time, Root?" before the gunman appears, storming by the dressing room door (its threshold now unoccupied).

"I'm always up for talking musical theatre with you," Root chuckles, waiting in the center of the dark dressing room until the gunman's footfalls drift away. Shaw does not respond. Root's heart twists a little at that, thus she tries professionalism. "Why would the mob come after Tyler in the open like this?" 

"Maybe it's not the mob." Root can hear the shrug in Sameen's voice, and smiles vaguely. "Maybe Tyler isn't the victim after all."

"Seems unlikely," Root comments, looking around the shadowy room with thoughtful brown eyes. 

"But not impossible," Shaw counters. "We've been wrong before."

"YOU've been wrong before," Root rebuttals childishly. Shaw heaves another static-y sigh. Root freezes, lifting her hand to her ear as she backs away toward the side exit of the music chamber's hall, hidden behind a changing screen. The knob of the dressing room has begun to turn.

"Sweetie, can you hear me now?" Root asks, scared of losing Shaw due to poor reception. The Machine adjusts her perception and she can hear her again, quiet and resigned.

"Root, just--get out of there. Get yourself to safety. John will recon with you at--" the Machine cuts in.

"144TH, BROADWAY, AVE-N-UE." Shaw crackles back over Her and Root shuts her eyes tightly, shoulders nudging the back door open as quietly as she can. Through the bamboo screen she can see the vague movement of the other door. 

"Okay," Root breathes, twisting to slide through the small opening she's created in the opening door. "Thanks, sweetie."

"You're welcome," Shaw grunts. There is a hesitation as Root makes it out into the alley, abandoning her heels for the flats waiting for her by the dumpster. She manages to rip the pearl necklace from her neck and exchange it for the pea-coat hidden in the recycling bins before Shaw speaks again--softer, and further away.

"Root?" Root closes her eyes briefly as she pulls the coat on, her guns tucked safely in its inner pockets. She knows what's coming. She hears it every time; she swears, because she wants to. Because she has to. Because the Machine wants her to. Even if it isn't real. Even if none of it is real.

"I love you." The words are composite; stitched together, with subtle, but different intonations. Root inhales through her nose and lifts two fingers to her neck, tracing first the scar under the faulty ear, then shifting to touch the earpiece in the one opposite. 

"I love you too, sweetie," Root manages to get out as she stalks away from the orchestra hall, her head bowed and her coat billowing in the wind. She has a sneaking suspicion that when she returns to her car, she will find it empty--if it's even there at all. It will be abandoned. John isn't coming. No one is.

As usual, these days, Sameen Shaw is just a voice in her head.

The Machine just doesn't want her to feel alone.

**Author's Note:**

> [[Essentially, in this particular canon divergence, Root loses everyone except the Machine. To help her cope, the Machine 'ghosts' Shaw's presence through a series of recordings so Root still "has her around" so to speak. Essentially, Root has a ghost in the Machine.]]


End file.
